


Come to Her at Dawn

by Anam_Writes



Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Time Skip, no beta; we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23535478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: It is both a blessing and a curse to them both that they can love eachother so entirely these past five years.The millenium festival and the golden promise of Leicester's deer is almost upon them and Claude makes his preperations. Even with Byleth at his side they all still think him a madman in denial.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684297
Comments: 18
Kudos: 149





	Come to Her at Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Boop! Here! Have a thing i wrote at work and barely edited.

“Marianne and I are making tea,” Hilda sings hopeful through the door. “Care to join us?”

“No, thank you, Hilda,” Claude says, waves the offer away with a dismissive twist of his wrist. 

“You need a break,” Byleth says from her seat facing him on his desk. Her eyes say he needs a life too and he’d agree – he needs her life for his with a desperation that seizes at his heart, convulses the chambers – but that is why he stays squarely in his seat. 

“Are you sure?” Hilda asks. “It’s Almyran Pine.”

“Your favourite,” Byleth leans over him, her hand ghosting over his shoulder, down his arm. Her legs cross, her breath without air is in his ear. 

“Have fun, Hilda,” he finalizes his refusal.

The Goneril gentlewoman sighs and nods, closing the door to the Duke’s office. 

“She’s just worried about you,” Byleth tells him. 

Claude allows himself to turn to her. They’re nose-to-nose. If he leaned in just a little more, he would almost kiss her. Spirits and Gods at every four corners of the world, he wishes he could kiss her. But he can’t; not yet. 

“I know,” Claude says low, careful his voice can’t be caught by Derdriu Palace’s listening walls. “She knows I appreciate it.”

“Does she,” Byleth sits back up, posture straight and legs uncrossing at the knee so she could tuck one ankle behind the other. She almost looks lady-like. “She cares for you and you for her. And she’s very beautiful.”

“She is,” Claude scowls, doesn’t give an answer to her other comments.

“Hilda’s an excellent negotiator, natural-born delegator,” Byleth goes on. Claude goes back to his work. He knows her hand is still on him but any warmth that comes from it is only in understanding she intent to touch him. “She has an old established name with the support of even the more stubborn families; Gloucester and Edmund come to mind.”

“I have a Duchess,” Claude says. 

He has a Queen. He has a Goddess.

“I thought you trusted my council,” Byleth tries another angle: an appeal to the tender feelings he has for her. 

He’s proud. She’s become very adept at mind games from one year as his teacher and five as his shadow. 

“I trust you, my friend,” he says. “Can you trust my judgement in turn?”

Byleth does not say no. That, at least, is an improvement.

“Thank you, love.” 

He wishes he could kiss her. 

…

Claude thanks the stars his request for Lorenz to act as Gloucester’s representative during these talks are honoured.

“He’s infinitely more reasonable than his father,” Claude tell Byleth in the morning as he buttoned his trousers. 

“And a friend,” Byleth added.

She smiled and it was so rare that Claude did not correct her, did not say he was a better friend to Byleth than he’d been to Claude five years ago.

“Yes, sweet. A friend.”

Byleth hummed happily as she followed him from his quarters. “He’s very handsome.”

Claude grinned. “Have you tired of me? Looking for a replacement already?”

Byleth shook her head. “Just another suitor for the empty seat at your side. He’d make a fine Duke.”

Claude knew it was only half in jest but laughed all the same.

So, it came to be that five veterans of the first Battle at Garreg Mach sit amiable, if not harmoniously, at Derdriu’s round table. 

Byleth sits in the Duchess’ place to his right, Hilda in a vassal’s place to his left. Marianne sits beside her friend, hand grasped tightly in Hilda’s and Lorenz sits across from Marianne making moon eyes.

Claude clears his throat. “As you all are no doubt aware, the time to act will soon be upon us.”

“Is your strategy not stagnation, Your Grace?” Lorenz raises a brow. “I mean no offense in saying so, as your stance at present has avoided the unfortunate possibility of Gloucester officially declaring for our eastern or southern neighbours.”

“And I don’t plan on that changing,” Claude assured the lordling. “Not yet.”

Lorenz inclines his head in a gesture that is not quite a nod. 

“Why now?” Hilda asks. “You say we must be ‘aware’ but I’m not entirely sure I understand what you’re talking about.”

“We made a promise,” Claude glances at Byleth. “All of us, to meet at Garreg Mach in a few days time for the millennium festival. I will be keeping that promise and I would appreciate it if you could spread word of  
that to any relevant parties.”

“You’re reuniting the Golden Deer?” Marianne’s eyes widen. “For…your war effort?”

“I’m not reuniting anyone,” Claude says. “Byleth will.”

They do not believe him. He knows they do not. 

He knows because Lorenz is standing up, shaking his head, refusing to coddle his wilting mind. He knows because Marianne is smiling and crying in a pathetic fashion only she has managed to master so prettily. 

He knows because Hilda’s face is in her hands and she says nothing before being the first to leave. 

He looks over at Byleth beside him. He rests his hand on hers and smiles and let’s himself breathe. Claude is the only one who looks that way. He is the only one who sees his bride, his Duchess, his Queen. All they see is a lonely man staring at an empty chair. 

…

“You should not go,” Byleth says, lying beside him. The bed did not creak, the mattress did not shift when she came to him tonight. It never does. But he can tell when she’s there all the same. “No one else will. They think me dead.”

“Even if I’m wrong,” he tells her, running his thumb over her cheek, feeling nothing. “Even if no one comes I have to go. It’s the most likely place to find you.”

Byleth is quiet. She has been more and more as the days approach. 

He comes closer to her, put his arms around her. There is a place for them to rest on her but his nerves do not fire off the signals and so he does not feel the cloth of her robe or her expanding lungs beneath the coil of muscular back. He does not feel her. 

“Close your eyes,” he instructs her, and she does so. “Tell me again about where you are.”

“I see darkness,” she tells him. “Just the back of my eyes. I hear running water. It’s quiet and far off. I feel wet bedrock on my back. I’m cold and soaked through. I’m…”

Claude kisses her forehead even though he knows she can’t feel it. “Go on.”

“I’m scared,” she whispers. 

“Just a few more days,” he says. “We’ll be together again, I swear it.”

Byleth nods. She sits up and pulls off her robe, her thin gauntlets, her armour, her blouse. 

Claude watches her, unmoving, lying back as she strips herself of everything she wore into battle the day she died. Her scars are fragile and white as porcelain against the flush of her skin. 

They are how he knew she was real when he first saw them. His mind would not conjure her with so many scars, with so much proof of everything that could take her from him painted across her body. Flesh was crueler than even his mind could be. 

“Please,” she asks, a hand he thinks would be soft smooths over his back. “I want to see. Please.”

She has no body to take part in and so he will not deny her the experience of his own. He strips himself of his tunic, his trousers, everything. He kneels before her on the bed and she perches herself in his lap. 

There is nothing to be felt when her arms reach around him, when her fingers card through his hair – even as it moved with her touch, falling into the places she strokes it. All the same he shivers. He holds her and imagines what it will be like when he has her back. When they can be together, finally. 

One arm pulls her back into a curve against his body. He takes himself in hand and starts slow. 

He wishes he could kiss her. 

“Can I touch you like this?” Byleth asks him. “If you find me, can I?’

“When I find you,” he says. “You can do anything, have anything your heart desires.”

“You’ll kiss me first?” she asks.

Claude smiles. “They’ll have to pry me from you. I’ll kiss you any hour of the day.”

“Will you love me?” she begs of him.

He can feel his gut clench, but he tries to stay at pace. “I love you now, sweet.”

“Will you love me?” she asks again. She’s blushing. There is no blood in her form, but she blushes all the same.

“Yes,” he makes the oath easily. “I’ll make love to you.”

“How?”

It’s hard to stay steady. His pulse is rising, his skin prickles like she’s a cold draught that’s washed over him. He swims with her. It’s a little overwhelming. He can only imagine what he’d feel were she here in his arms. 

“However you want,” he sighs. 

Claude staggers, feels hot. He’s aching. 

“Platitudes. Pretty words,” she says. “Tell me. Please.”

“I’d lay out fur by the fireplace,” he sets the scene. “I’d get candles. Get tea. Spread you out and take you as my second course. Byleth, you’ll be so sweet beneath me.”

Byleth mewls. He’s spurred on.

“We’ll have time. We’ll have each other. Will you like that?”

“Yes,” he can see the heat behind her eyes before she answers, before it spills out. “Yes, please. Please.”

“Please?” he whispers 

“Come for me,” she begs.

This is not what she’s asking for, him groaning quietly, spilling over his own hand alone in his room with only the vivid image of a far-off friend to keep him company. But none the less he comes. 

When he lies with her in bed – moonlight melting away through his window as hours shrink and he stays awake just to look at her – he holds tightly to her. 

“Soon,” he says, exhaustion taking him to its depths. “I’ll come for you. Nothing could stop me.”

When he wakes in the morning she is gone. For the first time in five years he is completely alone. Wherever she slept it could not be deeply now. 

He sets out in the afternoon, more certain than he’s ever been of anything else. He flies day and night to arrive at the Goddess tower in time. 

When dawn comes in at the turn of the millennium so to does, she. His star rises bright in stone and stares at him bathed in light, smiling. 

“You overslept, Teach.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading! ;) Love your faces!


End file.
